Exploring the content knowledge of prospective mathematics teacher students in designing HOTS questions

Abstract

Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) are abilities that must be taught to students as a provision to face the progress of the times. To measure students' HOTS, a teacher must be able to compose HOTS questions. For this reason, prospective teacher students must also be equipped with the ability to prepare HOTS questions to teach and measure their students' higher-order thinking skills. This study aims to explore the content knowledge of prospective teacher students in designing HOTS questions. Content knowledge of prospective mathematics teacher students is seen from three main components, namely knowledge of subject matter, pedagogical content, and curricular content. This research is a qualitative descriptive with 7 groups of subjects formed from 20 students of the Mathematics Education Study Program, State University of Malang. Data was collected through project assignments and unstructured interviews. Data analysis was carried out by presenting data, reducing data, and concluding data. The results showed that there were differences in knowledge about mathematics, pedagogical content, and curriculum content. This difference can be seen from the HOTS questions compiled by prospective teacher students in each group. Group 1 can compile HOTS questions as much as 42.5% of the total questions. Groups 2, 6, and 7 compose HOTS questions as much as 25% of the total questions. Group 3 compiled HOTS questions as much as 35% of the total questions. Group 4 compiled HOTS questions as much as 27.5% of the total questions. Group 5 compiled HOTS questions as much as 0% of the total questions. Suggestions that can be given from the results of this study are the importance of designing new learning models that can improve the ability of prospective mathematics teachers in designing and teaching mathematics to future students.